


The Towns go Drifting By

by lolcano



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Bucky Barnes takes America, Gen, Hobo Life, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Travel, introspective
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-08-07 22:56:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16417601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lolcano/pseuds/lolcano
Summary: After the events of the Winter Soldier, Bucky travels through America by train. His life unfolds before him slowly.





	1. Chapter 1

Waiting for a train. Men like him, travelling by train, their clothes dirty and meagre belongings carried in a stick, because there was no work and they had nowhere to go, no one did, and he remembered the man’s eyes, distant and far off, as he told them about orange sunset valleys and fields full of gold and Steve had given him a dime and a sandwich. A man sitting by the side of the road in Brooklyn, his clothes torn and dirty – a vagrant, a bum, the dispossessed, he had belonged nowhere, and travelled everywhere. And Bucky had thought back then… He thought, _times are tough_ _all over buddy_! and he had fingered the nickel in his pocket and hadn’t wanted to give it to him. Because they had so little of it. Because they needed to eat too. And yet his father had said… What was it, he had said? He couldn’t remember, only that he had been mad at him, angry at him, for some reason. That money isn’t everything. Something about principles. Fine principles! To throw everything away in search of principles while you have four children and now HE had to look after everyone. Yes, that was his father and yet now he couldn’t remember his face, he could only see his back, late at night as his father sat at the drafting table, drawing and writing. Steve saying the same thing to him later and he was so angry because what did he know? Whose side was he on? You can’t eat principles. They were idealist idiots, the both of them, and if _he_ hadn’t been there to look after them then…! But then Steve didn’t need looking after anymore. Steve didn’t need anyone at all, anymore.

He was walking along the railway tracks away from DC. The track passed below him rung after rung, as if he hadn’t moved at all. As if he was walking to eternity. A ladder into heaven. There was a story about that, wasn’t there? And the angels were ascending and descending. And he was leaving behind his family in exile, travelling into the wilderness.

He remembered stuff like that every once in a while. Disconnected phrases and snatches of an idea. He tried to pull them together. But it was like grabbing sand at the beach. He was reaching out and then he was falling, falling… He is in the water, submerged, and he sinks sinks but there is someone below him and…

Just keep walking.

He was walking along the railway, waiting for the train to come. For a train to come by like thunder so he could hide himself in a boxcar like a hobo and be anywhere but here. He won’t stay here anymore. He doesn’t belong here.

He didn’t belong to them, he didn’t have to listen to them, didn’t have to go back to them. He was Bucky. James Buchanan Barnes, that’s what the museum had said, and these flashes of memory, whatever they were, it wasn’t just a dream. It wasn’t some fantasy. It was real and all he had to do was… _remember_ it!

 Words drifted into his head. Waiting for a train. Yes, that’s what he was doing. A thousand miles away from home, waiting for a train. The words drifted to a melody, a half-forgotten tune that weaved in and out of static, like a radio set to a distant channel. A song he had once heard but was now forgotten. And now only snatches remained, a faint wail of the harmonica drifting through his head without end. It frustrated him that he couldn’t remember the words, that he couldn’t remember where it had come from. He needed to remember. He could almost remember. A word on the tip of his tongue.

Waiting for the train. A train. A white mountain, snow falling gently. The train, long and narrow, a pencil thin line against the soaring mountain heights. Steve, watching with horror as he fell. “Bucky!” a voice drowned out by the constant rumble of the train, steaming across the mountains. The familiar rumble of the train as it soared above Brooklyn on its elevated tracks and he sat and looked over the ocean over Brooklyn Bridge. That same ocean, expanding until it took up his whole world and Brooklyn became a small dot on the horizon as the ship sailed away to Europe. Europe, the old country, soldiers marching in the streets. Sitting beneath a tent as the rain beat down and water ran in rivulets through the mud and he smoked a cigarette contemplatively, waiting for the next battle to begin. Gunfire, mud flying into the air, breathing heavily behind a stone wall as the world exploded around him. The skeletal ruins of a city in Europe. Ashes falling like snow, the world red with flames. Snow falling like ashes. Cold. They were pressing him against the chair and…

No, stop thinking. He breathed in and out slowly. Why did it always lead back to that? Memories begat memories and ran in confusing circles. Just… keep moving forward. Rung by rung, he walked forward. 

And remembered. He remembered blocks of brown buildings that obscured the sky and a small room with a woman in a dress and a man’s back, he remembered the sound of the city, voices drifting always through the narrow spaces, the buildings like a cavern, the roar of cars and radios and people shouting, he remembered, with a sharp crispness he couldn’t explain, standing as a child in front of the grocer dressed in winter clothes and his breath spiralling upwards like a cloud. The coldness of the winter air stung his face and he waited on the sidewalk to cross the street, clutching a bag of food in his mittened hands. The cars on the street weren’t like the ones they drive nowadays. The grocer wasn’t like the stores they have nowadays. His mother had always made him run to the store to buy a stick of butter or dash of this or that. Why not buy more than a dash, and save a trip later? Don’t be absurd, his mother scolded him, what if we don’t need another dash later? We’ll have wasted our money for nothing.

And gradually he felt a distant rumbling in the tracks, the faintest shaking. A train was coming.  He moved away, away from the gravel shoulder into the surrounding trees and waited. The train appeared like the sun in the morning. It flew across the tracks roaring and rumbling, miles and miles of cars rushing past. Bucky accelerated, grabbing onto a ladder with his metal arm and feeling the dull jerk as he was caught up in the momentum and he flung himself upwards. He was on the train.


	2. Chapter 2

He was an empty vessel, waiting to be filled, and they filled him with words and commands and directives and he followed them without question. Do this, then that. Kill everyone in your way. And he would do it. Because beyond that, there was nothing. He was nothing.  

Nothing. He awoke into nothingness. Nothing but noise and vibration. He breathed in and let the sound wash over him until it became meaningless, a deep and constant white noise that rattled into his bones and the sound became part of his body, became nothingness.

And he realized he was outside. He was sitting in the back of a freight train and the steel form towered over him, heavy and palpable in the darkness and it rattled in his bones. They were taking him somewhere. Where? He did not even think about it. The question, like the noise, the darkness, was meaningless. It simply was. He was, and he did not even need to think in order to be, as some claimed, because he existed in spite of himself. They were taking him somewhere and it didn’t matter where he was going because he was going and there was nothing else to do but wait.

Wait for the inevitable, for the blood and the fire and death and the pain that encompassed his whole existence, and beyond which there was nothing. It was all he knew. It was all there was.

And he sat still without moving, hiding himself in the iron depths of the train, waiting for the inevitable to come. He waited and gradually gold seeped into the sky. It broke through the clouds and lightened the sky which was framed with tall green trees, and he looked around and saw he was in a forest. And he was alone on the length of the freight train which extended for miles in either direction.

And gradually he remembered they weren’t taking him anywhere.

He was forgetting something.

The mission. Yes. He had to stop him. Kill him. They had told him to kill him. So know he knew. He knew where he was going. To find that man and kill him. It felt better to know. To obey. Because beyond them there was nothing else, nothing but this vast expanse of rails which extended for miles in either direction.

He would find that man and kill him, that man who had seemed so familiar, that man whom he knew.  

No, a voice told him, you don't know him. But then... But then the man he didn't know the man who he was supposed to kill (but he didn't want to kill him. Why not?), he could see him falling. He was falling, and the train was a pencil thin line against the soaring mountain height, receding into the distance. “Bucky!” a voice drowned out by the constant rumble of the train, a deep and constant white noise that rattled into his bones and the sound became part of his body, nothingness. And the man was watching him with horror as he fell and his face became fainter and fainter and then suddenly it was reversed and he was watching that other man fall, he was sinking, weightless, in the cold water, and he could see a faint form in front of him and he was reaching out - the other man was reaching out but he had fallen anyways - he reached out and he grabbed his arm and he brought him to the surface.

He knew him, didn’t he? He knew him? No that’s not right, you don’t know him something inside him said and he could feel the cold press of metal against his head and he gritted his teeth but he did know him, didn’t he? He had - he had read about him in the museum! That's right! And an immense feeling of relief flowed through him. He had seen that man in the museum. That's all. It's not like he knew him. He was just from the museum. That's why he had recognized him. But then... something was nagging at the back of his mind, there was something even more important he was forgetting. There had been... He had been....HE had been in the museum. And he remembered all of a sudden city streets with brown-stoned buildings and a room with faded forms moving around he realized that it was all real, it was not some sort of dream like he had always thought but these were memories. He had been... somebody. He had had a life, back then. He wasn't an asset he was a person, a real person, his name was Bucky and that was Steve and they were friends and he had said that….No… He didn’t… But he had left them. He wasn’t going to be their weapon anymore.

So he had left.

They weren’t taking him anywhere.

He was surprised that he had forgotten this so quickly. Probably he should be troubled that he had forgotten so easily. It wasn’t good to forget important things like that. And how many things had he already forgotten? But the feeling did not register. So then he thought maybe he should feel happy or glad that he had remembered who he was. But he didn't feel happy either.

There was no more mission. No more orders. No more “do this” or “do that” and he would do it. There was only this train which flew forward into nothingness. Taking him nowhere.

He wasn’t happy. He wasn’t sad. He wasn’t anything at all.

He was an empty vessel, waiting to be filled, and there was nothing left to fill him.

But the train ran on, despite himself.


	3. Chapter 3

The train ran on, despite himself. It took all his energy just to lie there, pressed against the steel of the train. He watched the leaves of the trees dancing in the sky like emerald beads in a kaleidoscope, throwing dappled sunlight across the train. A flock of birds flew by suddenly like a cloud, flitting in and out around the train and chattering loudly. And suddenly the train burst forward into blue sky and they were passing over a bridge with high tall arches spanning two forested hills and below him was the forest as far as the eye could see and rising upwards were leafy trees of jade and on all sides were rolling hills soaring upwards to the sky. His breath caught as he saw the green world below him and he wondered if he was the only person in the world who was seeing this right now. If he hadn't been here, who would have laid witness to the existence of such beauty?  He sat and watched the forested hills roll by and let the constant rumble of the train whisper around him like a lullaby. And he began to think about where he would go, what he would do next, because he could go anywhere. Anywhere in the world! And it was entirely up to him, because they didn’t control him anymore. He was free. He thought how long it had been since he had eaten. He'd have to stop at some point. And then what...? Onwards, to the next town, westwards, young man, towards the setting sun. A lone and mysterious stranger who didn't belong, who couldn’t stay. An outlaw, running from his past. It reminded him of something. He could see a long narrow street burning orange beneath the high noon sun. The memory burned into his mind. A memory?

A world covered with orange dust and hot sun...he thought to himself, and recalled a desert full of dun-coloured hills but that wasn't quite it... and he was travelling across vast orange-dust plains scrubbed with green brush and the jeep kicked up dust and they were pursuing someone and he took aim and he shot and a body quietly fell to the ground and there were mountains off in the distance layered like a cake and it reminded him somehow of a landscape he had seen somewhere else, tumbleweed drifting across an open plain crowned with orange mountains... and a single man rode on horseback with a tall white hat, and he was sitting in a theatre with a girl and when the gun fired on the screen she leaned in on him with a gasp and he laughed and put his arms around her.

The theatre! That was it. That's what he had been thinking about. A western. A mysterious stranger arrives in town, meets a beautiful woman, saves the day, then rides off into the sunset. He thought of the girl in the theatre and tried to remember her face but he couldn't - she flickered in and out as if she were a movie herself, laughing and talking without sound, clinging to his arm without contact. Ah, but it could have been one of hundreds of girls. How often had he gone to the theatre in those days? Weekly? Daily?

He remembered when Steve got a job there. “I’m just saying, if we were really pals you’d let me in for free.” But of course Steve wouldn’t let him. “It’s not right!” Oh, but it was all right to go about telling him about amazing films he had just seen, dangling them right there in front of his nose. "You just gotta go see it Buck, M* was absolutely stoo-pendous!" Can you believe this guy!? In any case, that job had ended in disaster and they were both permanently banned from the theatre.

In those days, movies were only 10 cents and featured moreover - a novelty at the time - air conditioning! Come to the CHILLY Westmount theatre and enjoy comfort like never before! Then all of a sudden everything was getting air conditioning, department stores and offices and rail cars, but not the Brooklyn tenements, which sweltered in the noonday sun and held the heat inside its narrow corridors and brick and concrete and metal, releasing the heat in slow wavering waves like a dying man’s breath, baking the tired sweaty bodies within. When he was younger Bucky would lay outside on the fire escape in an undershirt, lounging like some imperious Roman emperor, demanding from whoever was nearby - Steve or his sisters - that they fan him with a newspaper, though more often than not they would just roll up the paper and hit him, but sometimes they would take turns, back and forth, fanning each other, cherishing the brief relief that that little gust of wind brought them. In such a time, an air-conditioned theatre truly was a luxury! Or then, when he went and swam in the ocean, what cool bliss it brought! Only kids were not allowed to swim in the ocean – and so they had to be prepared to leap out in the blink of an eye and flee. And then there was his mother – no matter how much he dried himself off before he came home, somehow his mother always knew what he had been up to.

"I know you think it is fun and games," she would tell him solemnly, "But you ought to be careful. The ocean is a big place, and dangerous. One day you'll go out swimming and end up floating away to China."

His father would laugh and refute her, "That would be the day! A little boy floating out to China from New York, discovering a path even the eminent Columbus himself could not find!"

"And what’s to prevent him from going the other way, like Vasco de Gama, eh?" said his Mother, “The world is round and there are many ways to China.”

His father had to concede that this was true.

And when Bucky looked out over the ocean he remembered how close he was to drifting away to China and it made China seem exceptionally close – and wasn’t it, anyhow?! Brooklyn was close to everything! It was the very center of the world!

All ships stopped in Brooklyn, great freight vessels from Africa and Arabia, bringing strange and exotic wonders, and from Europe came the huddled masses earning to be free which he saw all around him, who lived next to him, who went to school with him. It was the stopping place of civilization, the gateway to an entire nation, the goods unloaded at Brooklyn would travel through the veins of this great nation, onto roads and rivers and trains, through mountains and valleys and plains, even where he was right now here on this train, and he remembered how he used to go down by the docks and watch the ships coming in from -

He was interrupted all of a sudden by a loud cry rending the air and in an instance his body was on alert, reaching for a weapon, all thoughts except survival rushing from his head and he was on a mission and he had to… he had to… There was nothing he had to do. It was just the train whistle. And the train ran on.


	4. Chapter 4

He remembered reading in the paper about pearl divers who dove down deep deep into the sea to find pearls. Down and down they would go into the darkness.

He could see the back of his father in the other room as if from a long distance, sitting at a drafting table. "Turn around!" he thought, but his father did not turn; his back was hunched over as if carrying a heavy burden, and he felt a rush of compassion and understanding that he had never felt before. Then there was heat and noise above him, like the blasting of a bomb, and he recalled dun-coloured hills and a truck that rattled over dirt roads, heat covering the world like a blanket. Straining as they held him down and cold metal clamped into his head and then... His mother, quietly laying a white cloth on a table. The mountain, cold and pristine, the train rushing past. "Bucky!"

He could remember the way his sister always looked at him, a wry smile playing around the corner of her eyes.

"Oh, so you're off again are you?" she would say, her hands deep in suddy water, pushing clothes violently against the washboard, "Well, somebody has to stay here and do the real work."

"I've got a job now, thank you very much!"

"Do you really? Or is it just another pretty girl?"

"What would you know about pretty girls?"

"I have a mirror, dear brother!"

"Really? I thought you broke them all?"

Maybe she really was pretty though, he can’t remember, all he can remember is the way that she smiled, her lips pressed together, her brow furrowed as if angry and her voice gruff but unable to keep the corners of her lips down. The way she cleaned the clothes, her sleeves rolled up, strong motions over the board. His oldest sister, two years younger than him. Edith. Five years younger than him, Rebecca. And the third, a baby. But she wasn’t a baby anymore. Even when he had left she hadn’t been a baby. He takes her hand and she wraps herself around his waist and cries into his uniform “Bucky, don’t go!” She must be an old woman now. What was her name? R- something. Rachel. No. Ra- Ro-…

But it wouldn’t come. There is so much he has forgotten. Isolated memories. His sister’s smile, her voice, her teasing. The way they used to compete over everything. He can see her standing there like a faded portrait. But what’s in the background? Their home. He could see a room as if submerged underwater, wavering in a hazy blue light and yet he cannot make out the details, it is dark. There are pearls there beneath the ocean, if only he could reach!

The newspaper in front of him, broad and wide with thick black columns. Text jammed together. He used to sell them on the streets, pushing through the crowds of boys and hefting the paper bundle over his head. A crinkle as he turns the page. He used to only look at the pictures. Elegant women in fur coats and dresses, pencil-thin. Ads for medicine, appliances. Cartoons. His eye caught by a flying plane. Did you know? C— S— was the first man to circumnavigate the globe by plane! Next to it, on an inky black background. Did you know?! Pearl Divers in the Orient can dive up to * feet in their search for pearls! Bold strokes of ink. He loves this section. A cartoon picture of a women wearing pearls, her grin too wide for her face. The picture of a woman in a swimsuit and bathing cap about to dive. An ad for swimming lessons down at the YMCA. Anyone can learn! The newspaper is spread around the table. He can hear faint voices. His mother and father talking to each other. What are they saying? He stares at the table. The jumbled text of the newspaper. Rebecca’s feet dangling from the chair next to him. A room, faded, distant, turning into darkness. Will it ever get clearer? Or is it gone forever? All he can do is grasp for pearls in the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is this story going anywhere? I wonder... Anyway this is all just my headcanon. Thanks for reading!


End file.
